adventures in geekery

Fandom Acts: Charity coins available for a limited time only!

Pre-order now!

Just want to make a donation?

All donations will go directly to Random Acts once pre-orders are closed.

Legal Stuff:

Fringe is the property of Warner Brothers Studio and Fox Network. Fringenuity is not associated with Fringe in any way, we are here only to support and promote the show through social media. No copyright infringement is intended. All photos, articles, etc. are the property of their original owners.

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All of the orders have now been processed and shipped. Most Americans already have theirs, and Internationals should start getting theirs next week. Tracking information has been provided where available but most of those international orders have to fly on faith, as tracking would have been quite a bit more expensive.

If you’re just now hearing about the project and want to buy a coin, hold tight, we’ll talk about the next step after the project report.

So here’s how the project broke down, for anyone interested in the gritty details:

Once again, it’s been an honor and a privilege serving the Fringe fandom. To everyone saying thank you for making it happen: it’s my brand of joy to be able to make people happy while raising funds and awareness for such a wonderful cause. It’s an awesome niche to fit in and it really is my pleasure.

I already said some stuff about carrying the fire and paying it forward in that overly sappy letter that went out with the coins. So get out there and find someone to be kind to, every day. Kindness is as good for the giver as the receiver, and your heart will be lighter for every heart you touch.

Moving on…

As expected, the influx of tweets and photos of delivered coins has attracted a number of people who missed the order period and are keen to acquire a coin. Guys: don’t fret, it’s not over. Raising money for Random Acts was only half the project, making fans happy was the rest. There are still several coins available, but they’re on hold in case of lost mail for those who’ve already ordered. For now I’m going to start a wait list: to add your name, please email Fringenuity@gmail.com with “Wait list” as the subject line, and your desired quantity in the body.

Once the first batch of shipments have all been delivered (let’s say 3-4 weeks to be sure), I’ll contact those on the wait list in order of their response – coins will be $15.00 + shipping. If there’s enough interest to cover a second run of 100 and still raise funds for the charity, I’ll consider it. (First run collectors, don’t worry; if we do another round, there will still be only 300 of these in the world. They’ll still be a lot rarer than the originals.)

For now though, I have this little box of coins, and this big idea of making the world a brighter place, so…

Let’s have a contest!

Inspire me! Taking a page (sort of) from the Random Acts playbook, I have five coins available for five people who can send me a photo of you doing something kind for someone.* This needs to be something that requires a little effort; a picture of you petting your cat won’t do it, I trust you pet your cat anyway. It also doesn’t need to be expensive: raid your bookshelves and donate the gently used culls to an assisted living facility or shelter, make a care package for an under-appreciated teacher, or leave an encouraging note for a stranger. Make it a good experience for you as well as for whomever you choose to reach out to. Keep it legal and safe, and have fun. Winners will be randomly drawn on March 13th. Tweet your submission to @Fringenuity to enter.

Get creative. Get kind. Get going!

*If you’re allergic to cameras like I am, you don’t have to be in the photo. I just need evidence.

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We’re drawing rapidly to the close of our Random Acts fundraiser, and once again you guys have surpassed my secret hopes for the project (I was hoping to reach $1000.)

Just like you’ve always done, since we first #CrossedTheLine together.

With a little over 48 hours to go, we’ve sold 122 coins and raised well over $1200 for Random Acts. There will of course be a full report once the order is placed with the minting company, but for now I have a special announcement:

Random Acts is right. Kindness does indeed breed kindness, and in the best possible iteration of the spirit of not only this project, but the Fringe fandom in general, we’ve found ourselves with 13 available sponsorships for any fan who’d like a coin but can’t afford one.

These sponsorships are an unexpected but touching development instigated by the generosity of one fan. Her kindness inspired others to match it, so that no fan gets left out of this printing over such a banal thing as money. Anyone wishing to take up the offer may do so privately by sending a DM to @Fringenuity, @birdandbear, or emailing Fringenuity@gmail.com – all I need is a name and address. An announcement will be made if and when all sponsorships have been claimed.

Anyone wishing to offer a partial or full sponsorship, or just make an extra donation, may do so via the “Donate” button in the left column of this page. Anything not spent on coins or shipping will of course go directly to Random Acts.

Anyone seeking other ways to be kind, or with ideas of their own, please check out Random Acts’ website for inspiration and support. I’ve been running this fundraiser for a month, and just today discovered that there’s a very active RA group right here in DFW. It’s one of the sweetest causes I’ve ever seen, spreading hope and love from person to person on a face to face basis.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to purchase an extremely limited piece of fandom history memorializing Fringe and the fans who loved it, with all proceeds benefiting a truly awesome cause. Fringe fans made history with their tireless support of the show, even inciting the network to publicly support their efforts. This commemorative coin celebrates the thousands of fans who came together and worked to keep Fringe alive, as well as the show they fought for.

The redesigned fan edition will very likely be even rarer than the original lot (only 500 minted) sent to the cast and crew. There will never be another show like Fringe, and there will never be another coin like this. In less than three weeks they’ll be gone forever – don’t miss your chance, pre-order today!!

Full project details can be found here. All proceeds support Random Acts in their mission to conquer the world, one act of kindness at a time. I’ve added a donation button for anyone who’d like to lend additional support to this wonderful cause.

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“How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” - Portia, “The Merchant of Venice” – William Shakespeare

Whenever I think long enough on the Fringenuity campaigns, that quote inevitably comes to mind. While the campaigns weren’t so much about doing good deeds (at first) the mental image they conjure is one of pinpoints of light in the dark, flaring up one after another after another until there was a glow strong enough to push back that darkness and defeat it for a little while. Long enough to get a real ending for a deserving story, and long enough to teach us all what we could do together. While we fought for our show, we learned a lot about the power of community and commonality, and for a little while we burned brighter than anything I’ve ever seen. So today I want to talk about good deeds, and points of light, and happiness, and kindness, and individuals making a difference, because all of those things are part of our ethos, and they’re all converging into one awesome project.

In December of 2012, fans made a final gesture of love and gratitude to the cast and crew of Fringe as filming was wrapped for good. Those were the Ambergrams and many recipients expressed their appreciation. However, since the coins we’d had minted were all meant for cast/crew, we were unable to accommodate the numerous requests from fans to purchase one, and we promised that one day we’d mint another run for all those who loved and supported Fringe during its time.

It’s been a rough couple of years and it took awhile but now, as promised, it’s your turn. Here is the Fringenuity commemorative challenge coin – a redesign of the original coins, updated to include Fringenuity’s final hashtag as well as the indefatigable dandelion – the show’s final symbol of hope and renewal.

*This is as close as I know how to get to an accurate mockup. See better examples here and here.

As with previous Fringenuity projects, this is a not-for-profit venture. The coins serve two purposes: making fans happy, and making the world a brighter place. All proceeds will go to support Random Acts in their mission to conquer the world one act of kindness at a time. Their cause and belief in connecting people are natural kin to the ideas that made Fringenuity work; please visit their website for inspiration on simple ways to make a difference in your community – or if you just need a reminder that the world is at least as full of good as it is bad. Random Acts has made it their mission to spread kindness from one person to another, in the belief that “kindness breeds kindness.” If there’s anything Fringe fans should understand it’s the impact of individuals on the world around them, and the way light so easily leaps from one wick to another if we only allow it to.

Please keep reading, important details ahead:

The coins will be available for pre-order until January 31st. At that time, the order will be placed with the minting company, and the donation will be made to Random Acts once the coins start to ship. There is a minimum order quantity of 100 coins for a total cost of $400. Once the pre-order cutoff date is reached, I’ll place the order based on the quantity sold so far, allowing a very few extra for shipping snafus. The order receipt, donation receipt, and sales totals will be posted here for total transparency. This is a very limited opportunity to grab a cool piece of fandom history while raising funds for an amazing cause, so tell every Fringe fan you know, and pre-order yours today!

A note on shipping:

Fringenuity isn’t a business and this is not a store. While I do this kind of pre-ordering every year for CSTS t-shirts, I don’t usually have to worry about shipping things all over the place. To keep from melting my brain, I’ve selected the cheapest, simplest shipping options available. All options are padded just a bit (~$1.00) to be sure it’s covered. Any overcharged shipping will also go to Random Acts.

International folks: Tracking for international shipping is quite expensive, and the basic option includes only a certificate of mailing. There is also an international registered mail option, which I’m told is a bit easier to keep tabs on but still isn’t “true” tracking. If tracking is a concern for you and/or you wish to order multiple coins, please don’t pay an extra $12 for each coin. Contact me at Fringenuity@gmail.com instead, and we’ll work something else out. Otherwise, I’ll do everything in my power to make it right if something goes wrong. Please allow 4-6 weeks from the closing of pre-orders (31 January) for shipping before getting grouchy. Not responsible for duties or taxes.

USA people: Please also allow 4-6 weeks from January 31st before getting upset. Remember it takes time to mint the coins and get them here before they can be shipped to you, and since it’s just me I’ll be very busy once these things come in.

Feel free to direct any questions to Fringenuity@gmail.com, @Fringenuity, or @birdandbear on Twitter. As always, thank you for your generosity and support. ♥

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It’s been in the back of my mind all week, as I tried to focus on things I needed to do and mulled over what, if anything, we should do as a group to remember our friend. I finally had an inspiration today that I think works as a tasteful and loving gesture, if anyone would like to participate.

Candles are used for both birthday celebrations and remembrance, so I’ve lit one for her and taken a photo of it. If anyone would like to do the same and tweet it to @Fringenuity, I’ll compile an album and pass the link along to her family. Here’s mine:

I’d also like to ask our loyal Fringe family to join me in a virtual moment of silence to remember Aimee tomorrow evening. The concept is simple, just tweet an ellipses and nothing else, like so:

…

It’s a text based gesture that’s been used for such things before, and, as tomorrow also happens to be Fringe Friday, I thought it couldn’t be more fitting to schedule it for the same time as one of our old Fringenuity tweetouts. So tomorrow night at 8:00pm EST, if you wish, tweet some dots for Aimee, because there will never be words for how much we miss her.

Happy Birthday Aimee. Wish you were here to laugh at all this.

Edit: Cortex Ifan just asked if she can tweet the picture with the … for the “moment of silence.” I think it’s a beautiful idea, if anyone else would like to do it that way.

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Our friends over at the Almost Human Task force are launching a new campaign to support the show and let the network know we’d give our (doll’s) right legs for a second season. You can read all about it here!

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The season finale of Almost Human is already upon us, and the folks over at the AHTF have organized a full scale social media event to celebrate! The campaign will work just like a Fringenuity campaign, but for anyone joining us for the first time (or a little rusty), here’s a refresher on the way it works:

TWITTER EVENT PROTOCOL

The chosen hashtag is #AlmostHumanLives.

The event will begin at 7pm EST, Monday, March 3rd – one hour before Almost Human airs.

Don’t use #AlmostHumanLives before the designated time: using the tag prematurely hampers trending chances.

You may spread the word about the event by placing parentheses around the #, like so: (#)AlmostHumanLives. This allows us to promote the campaign without interfering with trending algorithms.

One # term per Tweet. Multiple hashtags will keep a tweet from being counted towards the trend.

Lots of people tweeting matters more than the number of tweets.

Those with lots of followers help out a lot!

We can discuss aspects of the show in our tweets -TRY to include Almost Human (with no #) in your tweet if possible. We want to pique the interest of non fans.

Private accounts must have their locked status removed, as the tweets from these accounts do not count toward the trend tally.

Retweets are the easiest way to help out the trending effort. Just search for the hashtag, and retweet the ones that are interesting to you. If you know how to use a Twitter application suite like TweetDeck or HootSuite, this is made even easier.

Don’t forget to check in at TV Tag (formerly Get Glue.)

If you are in the U.S. and have an iPhone or Android phone, give Viggle a try. Their check-ins are included in the data of several prominent social television analysis companies.

Some of our talented artists have created these awesome posters to promote the event, please post them everywhere you can!

Be sure and follow @AlmostHumanTF for updates!

For more information on trending campaigns and how it works, see here.

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I’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing lately, scrolling through old tweets and remembering all the awesome times we’ve had. My favorites list reads like a microcosmic history of my Fringe experience – all the best moments encapsulated in >140 characters of palpable joy. There are BMA’s, Ambergrams, responses to both from cast and crew, Fringenuity tweetouts, campaign reports, fundraising initiatives, TFE tweets…it just goes on and on, and all off it reminds me just how amazing this fandom is, and how privileged I’ve been to be there for it all.

There’s been so much hope and defiance, ingenuity, support, and dedication from so many people…and there’s been loss. It’s been a rough couple of months, but as Aimee loved to say, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” The show may be over, and Aimee may be gone, but everything happened. The proof is there in all those tweets and posts and vids, and it’s in our hearts forever. Aimee wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and neither would I, and I’d be willing to bet neither would any of you.

As we approach the anniversary of the Fringe series finale, I can’t help but think that there will never be anything quite like Fringenuity in 2012, and the mission we all embarked upon together. Two years ago Fringe had a line alright, and almost everyone assumed it was the one marked “end of the.” But we changed that. We set out to #CrossTheLine, and so we did. We crossed it, trampled it, scribbled it out, and when we finally crossed it again it was the one marked “finish.”

We changed an industry by proving that the old ways were no longer the best ones We’ve seen the birth of a whole new rating system, and on the second anniversary of our first campaign, Fox announced that it’s doing away with the idea of Pilot Season entirely, as well as looking at longer production times and shorter seasons for mythos heavy shows. Own that. It’s yours, it’s mine, and it’s Aimee’s. It might have happened eventually anyway, but it would have taken much longer, and Fringe would have been ground unfinished under the locked and protesting wheels of the establishment juggernaut. Aimee’s legacy and ours will be that current and future genre shows will have a greater chance of survival, allowing them to tell their tales, to grow to their full potential, and to do what great stories are supposed to do: impact out minds and leave us richer in their wake.

It was an amazing journey, and we’ll never see its like again. But although that story may be over, another one has already begun. The road goes ever on and on*, and there’s always another adventure around the next bend. Fringenuity is officially taking a break from the cheerleading business while I grieve and catch up on my life, but we’re not going anywhere. One day we shall come back. Yes, we shall come back*, and when we do we’ll have whole hearts and open arms with which to embrace and support great television. And in the meantime, the AHTF is doing a fantastic job providing a support network for Almost Human. If you haven’t already, please join them in their efforts to help Bad Robot’s new show succeed.

Happy New Year everyone, make it a good one. We’ve been reminded that our time is short, and tomorrow is never guaranteed. We’ve already done the impossible*, and that makes us mighty. You don’t need Fringenuity, you are fringenuity. Get out there and find a dragon to slay. Find something wrong somewhere, and try to make it right. The world is dark and full of terrors*, use the time you have to make it a better place.

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A month ago today was one of the worst days of my life. Late on a Wednesday evening I received a frantic message from a friend, begging me to tell him that this was some kind of horrible joke. When I opened the message to see what “this” he was talking about, I was stunned to learn of the unexpected loss of Aimee Long: Fringenuity co-founder, legendary fan activist, and one of the best friends I’ve ever had. My husband and I had just been brainstorming places to take her when she arrived for a much anticipated visit, and the only thought I seemed able to formulate was no that’s not right, she’s going to be here Wednesday.

In the time since then I’ve started this post a dozen times, scrapping effort after effort, because nothing I could say seemed adequate. A whole month later I still have no idea how to begin. None of the words that come to mind make any more sense than the ones I stared at so stupidly when my brain simply refused to accept what they were saying, because what they were saying was Aimee’s gone.

Nothing I can say could possibly compare to the anguish in those two little words.
But I’ve come to the realization that no words ever will, and so I’m going to get through this tonight, because it’s been too long, and Aimee deserves to be remembered here of all places. So I have my glass of scotch and my white tulip plucked from her grave, and I’ll just have to do the best I can to do justice to the incredible woman who touched so very many lives, and helped change the way an industry works.

Aimee was almost synonymous with Fringe to me; it was how we met. We both came to the show late, blazing through the first two seasons over the summer of 2010. We met on a forum that fall and bonded almost immediately. We gleefully (and endlessly) discussed each episode of the new season, sometimes with other fans on various websites, sometimes over long, silly Skype conversations. We eyed the ratings with nervous frustration, watching the show continue to outperform itself week after week even as the numbers kept falling. By late 2010, when Fringe was moved to Fridays, we were talking about ways to try and help the show. I painted my car the day after Thanksgiving that year. Aimee found some bumper stickers and took to wearing her Fringe gear every time she left the house. Others started making promotional videos and artwork to be posted all over the place. Our efforts were too disparate to have any real impact, but Fringe was renewed anyway and Twitter reverberated with the jubilation of the Fringedom.

Near the end of 2010 I had this crazy idea to try and get people to dress as Observers on a certain day and go out into the world to draw attention and show the network that “Observers are here.” There was a little bit of interest from other people, but when it came down to the day, everyone else who’d intended to participate bowed out for one reason or another – except for Aimee. She eschewed the bald cap (for which, in retrospect, she was smarter than me) and just went out in her Fringe Division t-shirt and Peter Bishop Triumph jacket, while my sweetly supportive husband and I went full…creepy… with it. But while we were out there looking like total freaks, the knowledge that there was even one other person who was with us in spirit; talking to people and looking like a fool for the sake of a friend and a TV show…the thought kept us warm on a freezing January night. I think that was the night that cemented our friendship.

That was Aimee. I’d said numerous times that I’d do it by myself if I had to, and she knew we’d be on our own. So even though the “event” was already a failure, and we were half a country away, she went out too so that we didn’t have to be alone. That’s the kind of friend she was, not only to me, but to scores of others. She was the one who was always there with an encouraging word, an ear, and a boatload of support.

When season four started and the ratings kept falling, we decided that Fringe needed more help than wacky cars, posters and promo vids. Over the next few months we did a lot of research, and came to the conclusion that trackable data was our best line of attack. We wrote our hearts out on Nielsen ratings and ways to be counted without having a box. We found a small coterie of friends willing to brainstorm with us, and discussed the need for a centralized mobilization platform, resulting in the transformation of my teeny blog. One day in October we had our first real meeting, with no idea that we’d be having those meetings almost weekly for the next 18 months or so. We came up with a name, and a terrifying plan to try and get people to use the hashtag #CrossTheLine for the mid-season premier in January…

I won’t rehash any more of the story, it’s getting late, I’m rambling, and most people reading this will know all about the wonderful things that came next. The important thing is that it was always Aimee. She was there in the very beginning, and although she often tried to deflect taking credit for our successes, none of the things that happened with Fringenuity would have happened without her. I truly believe that without Aimee, Fringe never would have gotten its season five, and the family we all made together would never have been as strong or cohesive as it was.Some of us were good at art, or videos, or ideas. I was good at organizing and writing long dry articles. Aimee was good at people. She was the best of us, and she’s the one who brought us together.

She was my friend for just over three years, and I couldn’t have asked for a better one. I’ll always be grateful to Fringe for bringing her into my life.

And now I’m out of words, which is probably good because there seem to be quite a lot of them here. It feels like when I stop writing, the most remarkable chapter of my life will really be closed. All I can do is close it with love and start a new one, shaped by an indelible mark left by an extraordinary person.

I don’t want to say goodbye, but I will say, I love you, my friend. We will never forget you.

*Donations to Aimee’s memorial fund are still open for those who’d like to contribute. All funds will go to her son, who’s just starting out in life and about to celebrate his first Christmas without his mom. Let’s take care of him for her.